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Showing Them What They Believe: Day One

March 8, 2016 - by Seth Drayer

“I agree with you. We shouldn’t kill children. I would never do that.”

I looked at the spirited protester across a table laden with condoms and signs reading “Pro-Choice is Pro-Life,” waiting for her to continue. After a pause, she said, “But not everyone is equipped to take care of a child. Minorities need this choice.”

Two days prior to this interaction, Created Equal’s Justice Ride bus had pulled into Jacksonville, Florida with a team of high school and college students anticipating a week of challenging the greatest human rights injustice of our day. Taking our cue from the Freedom Riders, who were trained before being deployed to battle, we arrived early to prepare our Riders before taking them to the frontlines. We armed them with photographs of abortion victims, embryological evidence for the life of preborn babies, philosophical arguments to defend the personhood of human embryos and fetuses, and tips in sharing the Gospel.

But it wasn’t until they arrived on site at the University of North Florida yesterday that they began to tangle with the worldview upholding the killing of babies. All day long, these students graciously responded to honest questions, such as “Doesn’t rape justify abortion?” (Answer: “The violence of abortion does not justify the violence of rape.”) They exposed ad hominem attacks aimed at their gender (“Men have no right to have an opinion”—that is, except for pro-abortion men) or their religion (“Christians shouldn’t force their views on others”—always stated by someone forcing his or her view upon us).

And many of them came face to face with the unapologetic discrimination that is abortion, such as in the conversation I had with the protester.

“Please correct me if I’m wrong,” I responded. “This is what I hear you saying: ‘I think it is wrong to kill children and would never do it myself. But it’s okay for minorities to kill their children.’”

“That is not what I said!” she retorted, trying to backtrack. What had seemed reasonable coming out of her mouth moments earlier suddenly took her off guard when being rephrased in front of her.

Why? Because too often we form thoughts and utter words without properly evaluating them. When our views are rephrased and laid bare before us, we often see them for what they truly are—in this case: discriminatory.

To declare that those belonging to minorities ought to be able to kill their children while those in the “privileged classes” should not is at best discriminatory and at worst a recasting of the eugenic dreams of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood.

Liberal America has so long been telling themselves the lie that they are inclusive and opposed to prejudice that they need to be reintroduced by us to their own ideas if they will ever understand how ridiculously prejudiced they truly are.

Showing them what they believe is what we will continue to do on our Ride this week.